Buster’s big break… Three Ages (1923), out now on Eureka Blu-ray

 

Buster Keaton’s first starring role in a feature film was in The Saphead (1920) but this was the first feature he directed – with the aid of Eddie Cline – and co-wrote with Clyde Bruckman, Jean C. Havez and Joseph Mitchell. This brand-new Eureka Blu-ray release celebrates Three Ages’ centenary and proves that, from the get-go, he was a Master of Cinema.

In his illuminating commentary film historian and writer David Kalat talks about Keaton’s enduring influence and you only have to look at Tom Cruise’s jump in Mission Impossible Fallout which mirrors Buster’s missed jump from building to building in the final stages of this film. Both filmmakers kept the fails in and revised the story around them, Buster laid up for three weeks and Cruise nursing a broken ankle. These physical risks add extra appeal gaining our admiration and fascination; Buster’s dangerous leaps still have hearts in mouths.

But, as Kalat points out, so many of the gags in this film have been recycled by lesser comics and the man himself. This was the first time I’d seen the full film and I could spot the most influential gags, but it’s still laugh out loud funny, especially with the family watching.

The Talmadge Connection: Talking of families, it’s impossible to discuss Keaton at this stage without referencing his producer, Joseph M. Schenck’s wife and sister-in-law… Keaton married Schenck’s wife Norma Talmadge’s sister Natalie in 1921. In 1921 Keaton was still putting his career in place and so was not quite the match Mama Talmadge wanted for her middle daughter and famously she put him down as “…not an actor, just a comedian…” so, there’s a real sense of biography running through the film in terms of the main protagonists trying to impress the parents of the girls they want to marry.

Natalie and Norma’s younger sister Constance was famously in DW Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) – one of the best things in it for my money – and it’s hard to know if this played any part in Keaton selecting that epic to spoof. Intolerance is a multi-generational epic across four different time periods and so, for his first film, Keaton narrows that down to just the Three Ages, all reflecting the eternal themes of love… or in this case, the many slips on the rocky road to marriage.

Thus, we have three broadly similar stories in which our hero, Buster, tries to convince the parents of his love that he is the one who should marry her ahead of his brutish rival. For the lead Keaton inherited Margaret Leahy, a young Irish actress who had won a competition judged in London by Norma Talmadge and Schenck, to feature in their new film, Within the Law (1923). After a day on set, director Frank Lloyd decided she couldn’t act and they had to weasel out of the contract by paying her to watch that film being made before starring with Buster in his film. It was to prove to be her only film and her inabilities added weeks to the film’s production as the directors tried to film the right expressions on her face.

Margaret Leahy in Ancient Rome

Wallace Beery plays Buster’s eternal competition – towering over the five feet four-inch comic; with Lillian Lawrence as the mother and Joe Roberts a most fearsome father, even taller than Beery.

We begin in The Stone Age… somewhere near Bedrock perhaps, with beefy Beery’s attempts to woo Margaret interrupted by our hero arriving on the back of a brontosaurus. Keaton said that his dinosaur-riding introduction was inspired by Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) whilst the animation was put together by Out of the Inkwell’s Max Fleischer and these were the two people that sprang to mind when his plasticine version enters the screen riding on the head of a stone-age brontosaurus... History is history here in spite of what so called “experts” might say and Raquel Welch would later confirm that all the scientists were wrong in the ground-breaking documentary One Million Years BC (1966).

Our second period is Imperial Rome where Buster faces off against the higher-ranking Roman soldier and there’s a chariot race with some difference as wheels are replaced with skis and Buster uses dogs to charge to victory after an unlikely snowfall…

Finally, there’s a section filmed in modern times with an opening shot of the contemporary New York skyline even though, as with the rest of the film, the locations are shot in California, with John Bengtson’s essay showing that many still exist.

Buster trias to negotiate with Bid Daddy and Beery Rubble

There’s a gag-filled speakeasy routine in which Virginia Fox really highlights Leahy’s limitations in her expressiveness and skill in supporting the ever-improvisational Keaton. Despite her acting, Leahy wrote despatches to the Daily Sketch in the UK and she did wonders for the UK box office by describing Keaton’s abilities, his work ethic and his skill.

The three strands are inter-woven throughout and the narrative is smooth. Legend has it that film was planned as three shorts that could be released separately in the event that the feature failed. David Kalat disagrees saying it is clearly a planned, cohesive feature film with comedy that escalates through the feature, paced differently to a two-reeler. The much longer Intolerance was cut down into three digestible chunks… so does this legend just pick up this?

Whatever the truth, Three Ages remains eminently watchable and with a comedy that has stood the test into a fourth age of the internet, social media and clownish politicians. Buster is still cool and still surprising… old stoneface was, in fact, one of the most honest and humane of comedians. That never gets old.

This new set is the film’s UK debut on Blu-ray, from a restoration completed in 2022 by the Cohen Film Collection.

·         Limited Edition slipcase (First Print Run of 2000 copies only)

·         1080p presentation on Blu-ray from a new restoration by the Cohen Film Collection

·         Reconstructed original intertitles.

·         Brand new audio commentary by film historian and writer David Kalat

·         This Side of Impossible – brand new video essay by David Cairns

·         Under the Flat Hat – brand new video essay by Fiona Watson

·         The Six Ages of Comedy – brand new featurette based on an essay by Keaton

·         Brand new interview with Ian Lavender

·         Man’s Genesis (1912) short by D.W. Griffith that is parodied in Three Ages

·         Video essay on the film’s locations by John Bengtson

·         Archival recordings of Keaton

·         PLUS: A collectors booklet featuring new writing by Philip Kemp and Imogen Sara Smith

 

Fiona Watson’s video essay on Keaton ponders the possibility that he was on the Autistic spectrum with a form of ADHD. Fiona is neuro-atypical herself and makes an interesting case especially for those of us with this condition in the family. Ultimately, as she concludes, to be able to make so many wonderful films in the way that this self-taught and self-made man did, required an extraordinary mind.

It’s a wonderful film and an essential acquisition, you can order the limited-edition version direct from the Eureka site using this here link!